But the morris dance—it was the dances that Kingston would spend money upon. There were two kinds of games which brought gifts to the church, May-games and the Kyngham. What sort of a game the Kyngham was nobody knows, but it brought the churchwardens most of their money: four or five pounds was a good collection. But the expenses could be heavy; there were shoes for the morris dancers, six pairs at 8d. a pair; there was silver paper for the dance, 8d.; and there were for the feast, besides other drinking, a quarter of malt, 4s.; 5 goce (geese), 15d.; eggs, 6d.; lamb, 18d.; sugar, cloves, and mace, 11d.; small raisins, 3d.; saffern, 2d.; vinegar and salt, 3d.; 2 cocks, 18d.; 2 calves, 5s. 8d.; sheep, 12d.; lamb, 16d.; quarter of veal, 8d.; quarter of mutton, 6d.; leg of veal and a neck, 4d. The morris dancers did well, with silver paper and new shoes; but the church kept a feast.
Kingston has the credit of the first and the last battles in the Parliamentary wars, but the claim is a little shaky. There was an affair of outposts between Rupert's cavalry and some Parliamentarian troops between Oatlands and Kingston bridge in the year 1642—after Edgehill—but it was not a battle. The real battle of Kingston came six years later, and ended all the warfare that Surrey saw. That was the battle which crushed Lord Holland's scheme of raising London for the King. We shall meet Lord Holland at Reigate; but the fighting belongs to Kingston. Holland, who had planned a rising on Banstead Downs, and had hoped to capture and hold Reigate Castle, was in full retreat. At Reigate he had feared to hold the position he had taken up; he retreated on Dorking, and from Dorking, pursued by Major Audley of Livesey's Horse, he fled north. On Kingston Common, a little south-east of where Surbiton to-day takes train for London, his horse turned on their enemy; his infantry fell back. From each side a few spurred out, "playing valiantly," Audley writes. But the Royalists were beaten. Lord Francis Villiers, younger brother to the Duke of Buckingham, a boy of great personal beauty, fought alone in their rear. His horse was shot under him; he backed towards an elm, and fought with six of them. They came up behind him, pushed off his helmet and cut him to the ground. Report came to London that he was wounded, and orders were sent out to care for him. But he was found dead, and his pockets were rifled. The evening was the end of the war in Surrey.
The Swan, Thames Ditton.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DITTONS AND WALTON
Surbiton trains.—Thames Ditton.—Parks for trotting ponies.—A forlorn garden.—The Dandies' Fête.—Graveyard poetry.—The Pleasance of a Ferry.—Giggs Hill cricket.—Ditton Tulips.—Hampton Bridge.—A dreary road.—Walton.—The Scold's Bridle.—John Selwyn and the Stag.—Terror at an elephant.—William Lilly, astrologer.
Surbiton is a growth of seventy years, and was born when the railway came. Once it was called a suburb of Kingston; now it has suburbs of its own. Tramways join it to London; the railway empties Surbiton into London every morning and pours London back again in the evening. Nearly seventy trains a day stop at Surbiton on their way down from Waterloo; nearly eighty stop on their way up. It must be quite inspiriting to lose your train, and to know that you have only three minutes to wait; or to catch the train before your train, or to choose which you will have of two trains. Until you realise these figures, it is difficult to understand why so many people are rushing about late for the train in Surbiton station. They are catching the train before.
But Surbiton is not all villas; or perhaps it is, and it would be truer to say that what is not villas within hail of the station is not Surbiton. Thames Ditton lies rather more than a mile away, and Long Ditton, between Thames Ditton and the railway, straggling, too, beyond the railway. Thames Ditton is rapidly becoming rich and prosperous. A few years ago it was a little, twisting main street, a ferry, an inn or two, and a church, and was flanked by two fine properties, Ember Court and Boyle Farm. Now the villa-builder has got to work, and the old estates are being sliced up into acres and half acres. Ember Court was once a manor belonging to Henry VIII, who hunted over it; later, it was the property of Sir Arthur Onslow, the first Speaker of the House of Commons who earned the title "Great." It is now a racecourse; trotting ponies and American "machines" dash and flash where Mr. Speaker sauntered staidly, and theatre bills flare at the entrance gates. Boyle Farm has fared little better. Once it was the Duchess of Gloucester's, wife of George the Third's brother; a century later, Lord St. Leonards, Lord Chancellor in Lord Derby's first and shortest-lived Ministry, had it. Now the park is criss-crossed with brand new yellow roads. I walked through it while it was still ringing with the builder's hammer; and straying off the gravel, suddenly found myself in the forlornest little place possible—a formal garden, box-trimmed, tiny, deserted; the narrow, carefully-planned beds nothing but weeds, the summerhouse at the side a ruin. A park cut to pieces looks as if it were in anguish. But a garden cries.